


colour theory

by antikytheras



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Gen, Genyatta Week 2018, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Plot, everyone probably needs therapy, so much plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 10:45:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14543040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antikytheras/pseuds/antikytheras
Summary: The sound of Sombra’s manicured nails against her mechanical keyboard is a near-therapeutic constant in his criminal life. She doesn’t bother turning around when she yells, ‘Close the door!’Genji stares at her and doesn’t close the door. ‘Did you do something to your hair?’The typing doesn’t stop. ‘Clearly. Or are you black-blue colourblind? If I punched you in the face what colour would your eye be? What colour does my hair look to you, regular Mexican black or obviously dyed cyberpunk vivid blue? Come on Genji, I don’t have all day.’Genji closes the door.





	colour theory

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for the "different skins" prompt of genyatta week 2018 but it got a little out of hand :/

Hanzo sits scowling in the corner of the dark, dingy (but entirely and admittedly respectable) club with a dark brown glass bottle in one hand and an expensive top-of-the-line latest phone model in the other. The screen is large, bright and clearly broadcasts the lack of new messages in his inbox. Irritably, he flicks open the conversation with his problematic young brother and fires off yet another colourfully worded death threat. And yet again, the only response he gets is a pop-up indicating he's been left on read. Just like with the last message. And the one before that. And the other twenty before that.

Great. Just great.

He tosses his phone aside, takes a swig of the strange-sour sake and immediately regrets it, just like with every other life choice he's made that's led to his current predicament. Neon blue lights its way across the scars littering the skin of his arm, and while it could be argued that it’s a result of the irritatingly-bright strobe lights that are arcing across the entirety of the bass-pumping club, Hanzo's seen more than his fair share of e-lixirs in action. He's signed too-many-warrants for e-lixir searches and arrested too-many-smugglers in the musty underbelly of this damned city. And now he's going to have to write himself an official excuse for accidental ingestion of the very potent and hence very illegal liquid.

With what feels like the hundredth exasperated angry sigh of the night, Hanzo scoops up his phone (grimacing when his fingers meet the strangely moist texture of the plush dark violet cushions lining the sofa and reminding himself to use forensic's alcohol bath on everything, including his metal joints and maybe his brain if he gets desperate enough) and activates the front-facing camera.

Sure enough, the black of his eyes is alight with the telltale electric-blue. He sees his own worn, tired face, framed by white streaks of hair that shouldn't belong anywhere on his young, twenty-something year old body, sees the exhaustion weighing down his eyelids, and wonders where his youth had gone. The quick glimpse of his misery is all he gets before the unnatural blue of his eyes flashes bright-in-warning and his screen fizzles out in a distortion of static greys-and-whites.

So not only is his awful brother late, he’s left him on read and deliberately out of place with his tailored suit in a questionable club, he's even dumped a whole day's worth of paperwork on him on a Sunday and _now_ he owes him a replacement for the fried CPU.

Before Hanzo can even think about pulling out his badge and arresting everyone in sight, Genji appears from what appears to be the wrong end of an emergency exit and slouches to his brother's side on the circular violet sofa.

'Hey.'

Hanzo takes one look at his loose, comfortable hoodie and the matching lazy, amused smile and snarls, 'Took you long enough.'

Genji shrugs, unfazed. 'Not all of us have company-issued bikes. Have you ever considered walking, dear brother? I've heard that it does wonders for the old and the aged. Something about,' his gaze wanders to the rough area where Hanzo's knees should be, concealed under the black glass table, 'keeping one's joints well-oiled, or so I've been told.'

It's a low blow. 'My prosthetics are fine,' Hanzo replies coldly, setting his empty bottle of shitty sake down on the table without so much as a clink. 'Some of us actually go for our bi-annual tune-ups.'

'Would that be twice a year "bi-annual" or once every two years "bi-annual"?' Genji laughs, splaying himself out over the seating like a contented cat. Or, on second thought, a lazy starfish.

'If you so much as entertained the thought of going to a mechanic once every two years I'd have a lot less to worry about.'

'And if you so much as stopped worrying for two seconds, maybe you'd stop growing to resemble our dear old Father.'

'What do you want?' Hanzo snaps at last, because it's easier to be angry than to beat down long-dead ghosts.

Genji's eyes flick over to a security camera trained on their seating area, and then back over to a nondescript black-painted panel in the ceiling. The movement is impossibly quick and sharp, nothing like the easy, relaxed image he carefully constructs for himself.

He lets out a contemplative, satisfied noise, and Hanzo immediately hates himself for falling for yet another of his brother's tricks. 'I told you. I got a tip off from one of my friends. Something I thought you should know.'

'Your friends? You mean those law-breaking hooligans?' Genji had always chosen poorly in almost all aspects of life.

'Yes,' he replies, even and measured, 'my friends. Or rather, my friend, singular, not plural. Surely Father's English lessons haven't flown over your head? He did so love to drill everything he could into us.'

'Shut up.'

Genji's gaze flicks over to the security camera again, and Hanzo traces the invisible path unwillingly. The pinprick-tiny blue LED light sitting beside the camera lens blinks out.

Neither of them bother looking up. Their augmented hearing easily catches the almost-imperceptible click of the disabled hidden microphone behind the black panel.

Hanzo has never hated his perfectly-edited genes more. Actually, no, he has.

Finally, Genji relaxes. His smile is free of malice, but no less mocking. 'Eyes and ears everywhere. Can't be too careful these days, us ne’er-do-gooders. Well done, brother.'

'Shut up,' Hanzo says again, but this time his voice leaks the distorted fuzz that comes with an e-lixir's EMP bursts. 'I never asked to be roped into this.'

Genji waves him off. 'But I did. Got good ol' Betsy over at the bar to add a little something to your drink. Don't worry,' he adds very seriously, 'I paid. Drink's on me.'

Hanzo stares at the bartender. The sharply-dressed man standing behind the bar looks supremely unimpressed, even moreso when Genji shoots him a would-be charming wink.

'Genji,' Hanzo hisses, as if he could even begin to think of where to start lecturing his own brother about how unethical and downright illegal it is to slip anything into anyone's drink.

But Genji is already shuffling his way out from the table, his carefree expression melting into something uncomfortably blank. 'The wharfs by Oasis. Two thirty-five AM. They say it's gonna be a big shipment.'

'Which dock?'

'They haven't decided.'

'Date?'

'Tomorrow night.'

Hanzo finds himself scrambling to follow. They melt into the crowd easily, two traditionally-trained assassins blending in with drunk college students as if one isn't overdressed and sparking with blue and the other doesn't have eerily-glowing red eyes and the murderous aura to match them.

'Tomorrow night!? How do you expect me to rally enough forces for a raid in less than twenty-four hours?'

In the blink of an eye, he's been tossed an arrest warrant for the very club he's been thinking of blowing up all night, perfectly-forged down to the way he dots his i's and crosses his t's. An unfamiliar strange metal card, cool to the touch, soon follows. Hanzo catches both without ever looking away from the thing he's learned to recognise as his brother.

Against the shifting mass of bodies, Hanzo catches sight of Genji's smile, a mirthless slash against the amusement in his violent-red eyes.

'I'm sure you'll figure something out,' is all he says before he disappears into the crowd, as if he really had faded into the ghost of the man he once was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genji takes a nice, brisk walk down the row of dilapidated shacks by the harbour until he finds the safehouse he’s been looking for. The green waves crashing along the banks obscure the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of his knocks, but thankfully the wayward occupants had the sense to install a pressure pad hooked up to a carefully-calibrated sensor so that no one would be left stranded outside the door in the dead of night. Or in a zombie apocalypse. Or, as was often the case, if they were getting hounded by the cops.

The electric lock gives way when he gently pushes the door open. It creaks loudly, echoing in the emptiness of the equally-decrepit living space. Inside is a tangle of vines, nature hard at work in reclaiming that which had always belonged to it. Whatever’s left of the roof opens up to the depths of the skies.

In another life, he might have stopped to marvel at the grand ironies of the universe.

But in this one, he merely sweeps a curtain of ivies aside. Ducks into the crumbling hole-in-the-wall and thinks of nothing but the passcode to get into Sombra’s private little “office” or, as Genji likes to call it, her ugly ass hole in the wall.

Asshole. Hehe.

After passing through two thumbprint scanners, one pressure pad (‘Wow, you’ve really been going at those burgers, huh.’ ‘Fuck you.’), one retinal scanner (‘You know, I realise I never asked, but what happened—’ ‘How about you mind your own—’ ‘Oh you silly little boy, this is me being polite. I know already.’), one uncomfortable interface debug scan (‘Ooh, now it’s my turn to be inside you.’ ‘Sombra, we’re both gay.’ ‘It’s alright, I always knew you were a bottom _bitch_.’) and three different twenty-one digit passcodes later, a deceptively crumbly wall panel slides open to admit him.

After _that_ , it takes two different elevators and a sphinx-esque riddle too predictable to bear repeating before Genji finally spots the hacker’s purple skull logo emblazoned on the door at the end of a long hallway.

He feels like he’s being reasonably polite when he flings it open. At least it hasn’t flown off the hinges again.

The sound of Sombra’s manicured nails against her mechanical keyboard is a near-therapeutic constant in his criminal life. She doesn’t bother turning around when she yells, ‘Close the door!’

Genji stares at her and doesn’t close the door. ‘Did you do something to your hair?’

The typing doesn’t stop. ‘Clearly. Or are you black-blue colourblind? If I punched you in the face what colour would your eye be? What colour does my hair look to you, regular Mexican black or obviously dyed cyberpunk vivid blue? Come on Genji, I don’t have all day.’

Genji closes the door.

‘I hope you gave your useless brother the card,’ she continues, finally turning back to shoot him a dirty look, ‘since _someone_ felt the need to knock out every surveillance camera in the vicinity.’

‘I did.’

‘Did what? Hand over the card or ruin every camera?’

‘Both,’ Genji snaps, stalking over, and the corner of Sombra’s lip curls up into a wicked smile.

‘Temper, pretty boy,’ she coos dismissively, turning back to her screen.

Now that he’s close enough to make out the individual programs overlapping on Sombra’s holograms, he takes note of the extensive surveillance network clustered in one corner, complete with visual and aural devices scattered all over the city. He thinks he might have spotted a literal fisheye lens trained on what looked to be a deserted, sparkling little beach, some distance away from the shimmering turquoise waves surrounding the spy camera.

‘Planning a vacation?’ Genji asks frostily, fighting the urge to lean in and peer for anything resembling a landmark. There’s little in the way of identifiable _anything_ , what with the way the waves wash over the screen in rhythmic surges of grey-blue-green.

Sombra laughs, waving the feed away and pinching another in to fill its place. This one is trained on a black speck in the distance, surrounded for miles and miles by nothing but the open ocean. ‘No, you silly machine. That’s where our mark was docked, up til about—’ She pulls another screen towards her, revealing a spreadsheet spanning at least three pages. ‘Two hours ago. Perfect. Our smugglers are on schedule.’

‘Oh,’ he bites out waspishly, driven to carelessness by his reckless impatience, ‘so _now_ you can tell me the mission details?’

Sombra laughs again, harder this time. ‘Sit down, Sparrow. Lying isn’t your strong suit, it’s mine.’

Genji freezes, staring at the back of her head. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

She continues typing away on her keyboard. On closer inspection, it’s pretty clear that she’s navigating several chat windows for a dating site, like she’s threatening him as an afterthought. ‘I’m telling you, it doesn’t suit you. Tell Overwatch to send someone prettier next time.’

The hilt of his sword is a twitch away from his fingers, hidden beneath his conveniently baggy hoodie.

Sombra flicks her gaze over to his hidden sword and rolls her eyes. ‘Calm down, idiot. And sit down already. I haven’t tried to kill you in the past three months, I’m not gonna start now.’

She reaches for her gun, lying innocently among several documents fanned out on her table, and reloads the chamber with a sharp snap. ‘Unless you give me reason to.’

He drops himself onto one of her plush, oversized bean bags, and he hates that he can barely even keep himself tense in the pillow of clouds.

‘Who else knows?’ he asks, resigned to his doom in the squishy bean bag. He can already guess the answer. Sombra’s specialty isn’t in her aim, like Widowmaker, or in her ability to assassinate, the way Reyes methodically sends each and every one of his targets to the grave. Her interests lie outside the battlefield and inside the memories of her targets, threading the truth and lies together until, combined, they form the backbone of her masterful puppetry.

‘No one.’

And of course it had to be the worst possible outcome. With delight sparkling in her eyes, Sombra gets up from her favourite rolling chair and pulls open a drawer, picking out a cable from a neat assortment of organised wires. This is the most excited he’s ever seen the hacker. ‘I’ve always wanted a special friend, you know. The others don’t need to know you the way I do.’

Genji forces himself not to turn around when she traipses behind him, one finger tracing the groove of the metal plating his shoulders.

‘You’ve been useful,’ she murmurs, ‘for much longer than you should have been. I know your undercover protocol— I mean, I _am_ the one who ghostwrote those papers, after all. Some of my requests have gone directly against your directive. Like the ones about “acceptable collateral damage”. And I’ve seen your kill feeds. You certainly look like one of us when you’ve got that much blood all over your pretty chassis. That’s not very _heroic_ now, is it? So tell me, what’s going on in that little head of yours, Sparrow?’

‘You talk too much,’ he says, numb.

‘And _you’d_ better start talking.’ Her perfectly-manicured nail finds the catch for his interface ports, and it’s a smooth, practiced motion when she flicks it open. ‘Now.’

Tonelessly, he begins. ‘I’m a double agent for Overwatch. My brother is a high-ranking police chief and our Father was an infamous mafia boss, it works out. We’re loaded with more cash than either of us could spend in three lifetimes, and we’ve been funding Overwatch by buying Ziegler Corp. shares for years. They asked if we wanted to take on a more hands-on approach and make some good use out of the ninja training our Father put us through since we were kids, so I said yes because I was bored and Hanzo said yes because it was the right thing to do. After the incident at Volskaya Industries—’

Sombra smacks him over the back of the head, silencing his mindless drone. ‘Don’t tell me what I already know. Tell me what you’re hiding behind all those firewalls and encryptions.’

It’s pure-angry-instinct when Genji twists back and rips the cable out of her surprised hands. He stares her down and notes, with triumph, that her witty little mouth is set in an ugly frown. ‘Not until you tell me about this mission. Who’s the mark? The _real_ one, not some money-grubbing tryhard mafioso.’

Sombra snatches the cable back out of his hands. ‘I was _going_ to, until someone decided he had to start flexing his grumpy ass,’ she snaps. She plugs the cable into Genji’s interface and begins to transfer the files from her personal servers.

His inner CPU cores revv up, unpacking the bits of information so rapidly they appear to fall into his augmented vision like rain from the heavens. A badly-taken photo begins to assemble itself before his very eyes, an all-too-familiar silhouette emerging from the depths of hell and staring him in the face (in the flesh) and the centre of his world spins and falls to the ground and everything goes red red _red with blood and fire_ —

‘Tell me, pretty boy. Does the name “Zenyatta” mean anything to you?’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A _thing_ sits alone in a maximum-security cell, jangling his chains off-beat to a song in his head that’s long-gone hopelessly out of tune. His voice box, rusty from mildew and sheer lack of maintenance, produces a pathetic little croon that bounces off the stone-grey walls boxing him in. The hum echoes low and dark, a cacophony at odds with the bright, cheerful jangle of red-flecked chains clamped tight over his purple-painted wrists and ankles.

Abruptly, the hooded figure stops. Stops moving, stops humming, stops doing anything whatsoever.

He gets up.

The thick, rune-inscripted chains crumple like paper flowers.

Immediately, alarms sound. The blaring irritates the thing’s ears. So he folds himself into a strange-familiar lotus position, deactivates his audio sensors and levitates himself in mid-air, just like that.

‘Tada,’ he feels himself croon.

A blinding pain stabs him in the head. He cackles and it fades immediately, dragged into a dark corner somewhere by whatever’s eating away his sanity from the inside out.

_Now_ he’s starting to feel a lot more like himself.

When he walks, it’s like he’s watching a silent movie. He watches with wonder as a ragtag team of omnics and humans slam open the door to his room and storm the perimeter of his tiny, cramped space. Annoyed, he thinks about how much he’d like to have some more breathing room, and becomes pleased when the omnic prison guards begin to turn on their so-very-squishy human friends.

The blood blooming on his grey floor sure does add a nice touch to the décor.

He politely says his thank-you and drifts out the front door unchallenged.

Moments after he crosses the threshold, he hears his precious children calling for him. They hiss and murmur in the last dregs of his mind, and it’s out of worry and panic that he begins to grab humans by the face (and sometimes eye sockets) and slam them headfirst into the nearest wall. It starts becoming a nice distracting game after a while, where he tries to make their heads explode in exactly-equal intervals so that he leaves behind a wall of perfectly-spaced red sunflowers.

He beams when he examines his handiwork. Or, at least, he would if he had a moving face. They really should have let him do the redecorating around here.

After a while, he starts to alternate the heights of the flowers, just for the fun of it. You couldn’t always expect nature to be _perfect_ , after all.

When he finally makes it to the door behind which his children are crying for him, he notes, with disgust, the unfortunate human waste smeared all over the doorknob. Oh well. He’ll have to make do with what he’s got.

After several unsuccessful attempts to insert the end of the knob into a flailing human’s nose, he huffs and grabs the human by the neck, slamming it into the entire thing instead. Unfortunately, the human’s head doesn’t handily detach like he’d hoped it would, but the door does fly open.

It lands on the floor and splashes about a little, like a fish out of water.

The voices of his children rise to a glorious, screaming crescendo, and he reaches out a desperate hand to meet them.

They explode from a glass case like grenade fragments, chittering so-very-excitedly when they ricochet all over the room like pool balls on a billiards table. When they eventually calm down and return to orbit around his neck, he notices a splash of red on one beautiful green eyeball.

‘That won’t do,’ he chides, and plucks it out of orbit. It coos in his hand, growing warmer and warmer until it’s shining with a golden light that might have once been pure and good.

The blood evaporates, and his child is as good as new.

He notices blood on another, and repeats the process. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another, and then they’re finally clean again.

Children, really. He doesn’t know how in the world they manage to get themselves dirty so quick.

‘You’re right,’ he says to no-one-at-all, ‘This won’t do. I can’t meet my students like this! No no no, I should get repairs. Right, Genji? Do you have any recommendations for a mechanic? You humans _are_ so very prone to error.’

Nothing replies.

Zenyatta laughs, and links his fingers with the empty air. ‘My, such a sharp tongue. No wonder you’re my favourite student.’

He walks like this the whole way to the staff exit, swinging his arm in whimsical back and forth. At this point, nothing stands between him and a nice afternoon stroll. He passes a group of petrified men and compliments the perfect symmetry of the closets they’ve decided to play hide-and-seek in.

He waits patiently at the pick-up point near the entrance. To pass the time, he counts the stars in the night sky. It’s a good thing his sensors can count several hundred thousands at once. He makes it to seventy-three million eighty thousand five hundred and ninety-two before a sleek black limousine pulls into the driveway and a whole party of his brown-robed students jumps out to meet him.

It’s only when their mouths move rapidly that Zenyatta realises he still has his audio sensors disabled.

‘Oh, silly me.’

He re-enables the mod, and immediately the sounds of the world swell to greet him. And still, for some reason, he can’t quite hear his Genji.

How strange. It almost makes him… sad?

Suddenly, he bursts out in snorts of stifled giggles. Nah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genji collapses into Sombra’s favourite rolling chair. Sombra doesn’t so much as _breathe_ a complaint, which is a mark of how dire the situation’s become.

She paces to and fro before him, brows furrowed in absolute concentration while she scrolls through files and data on the holo-computer strapped to her wrist. Genji thinks that Overwatch would like if he’d reported this little tidbit, how quickly the internationally-renowned hacker can process and generate old and new data when it really came down to the wire.

His mouth twists into a bitter smile. He’s always taken his work too seriously.

Sombra snaps her fingers impatiently. She’s not even trying to be rude about it. ‘One more time,’ she says, not looking at Genji, eyes still trained on the words and numbers rapidly falling in and out of her screen.

Genji closes his eyes and recites the information he’s committed to memory.

‘After I lost my body, Overwatch brought Zenyatta in to help me through my issues. Eventually, he made a breakthrough in my recovery and I was cleared for active duty. The higher-ups saw that we worked well together, so we were partnered for field missions. Then one day, he vanished, and I never heard from him again.’

Sombra finally looks at him. But it’s with a frown she mumbles, ‘You’re saying the exact same thing. Down to the very last word and letter. Why are you saying the exact same thing?’

Genji stares. ‘What?’

Sombra’s still staring at him when she reaches for a bean bag, drags it over and straddles it so that she can rest her chin on her hands. ‘Again.’

‘What’s the point, we’re wasting time—’

‘Again!’ Sombra barks, and Genji flinches.

His voice is almost robotic when he repeats, for the third time, ‘After I lost my body, Overwatch brought Zenyatta in to help me through my issues. Eventually, he made a breakthrough in my recovery and I was cleared for active duty. The higher-ups saw that we worked well together—’

‘Stop,’ Sombra says suddenly. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. You had another doctor for physical therapy. Angela handled it all on her own. So Zenyatta must have only ever spoken with you.’

‘What’s your point?’ Genji snaps. She’s really starting to piss him off. The dull throb in the back of his head isn’t helping either.

With a patience that Genji’s only ever seen when she’s debugging her own code, she explains, ‘No combat data exists for the two of you between the first and last date of your hospital stay. Tell me, sunshine, how would _anyone_ have known that you two fought well together?’

‘I don’t know,’ he bites out.

‘Unless—’ and here her eyes widen. ‘Unless you’d known each other from before.’

His head feels like it’s splitting in two. He buries his face in his hands and groans, only to have his eyes forced open again when Sombra shoves one of her holo-screens into his face.

‘Look! I pulled this from a news article, five years ago, a commendation ceremony for the members of Overwatch who’d stopped a Talon— Stop making that face, you know I don’t really care, as if that would’ve happened on one of _my_ missions— Anyway, don’t those two nerds in the corner look awful familiar to you, huh?’

When he stares at the photograph, it’s like he’s trying to squint into the depths of a very murky ocean. There are two people standing in the background of the photograph— No, one human and one omnic. They’re laughing together, standing much closer than some of the other emissaries politely mingling in the rest of the background, almost like they—

Genji tries to shove the screen away, only for his hand to phase through the holographic projection. It leaves a hole where their faces once were.

Sombra watches him with something like pity in her eyes, and closes the image from her central computer.

‘I’ll update your firewalls,’ she promises, ‘but right now I need you to dig into your memory bank as much as you can. Break them, corrupt them, whatever— I can’t get past those firewalls without your admin permissions. So just remember for me, right now, and I’ll swear to whatever god you want me to that you’ll never remember again.’

Once more, he recites the story that Angela had told him, again and again, until he could cling to it in place of the memories he no longer held. They’d sat in a hospital room, after his full body transplant into the body Torbjörn had built for him in record time. Angela had been his only visitor during the whole of his rehab because they’d feared _something_ , but he didn’t know what. There had been apprehension-and-sorrow in the defeated slump of her spine, and she’d held him tightly while he cried for something he had lost but could not remember.

He’s numb when his mouth forms the words, ‘I lost him in the Volskaya explosion. He’s dead.’

Sombra is not gentle when she shoves a wad of tissues into his hand. He doesn’t move, so with a sigh she pinches a piece and roughly scrubs at the trail of tears dripping from his chin and onto her favourite rolling chair. He vaguely registers that she’s crouching on the floor and frowning at the holo-computer strapped to her wrist when a red wave of emergency news notifications comes flooding in.

‘Fuck,’ she swears. It’s the first time he’s ever heard her swear.

She gets to her feet and runs back to her computer table, shouldering past Genji’s unmoving form. She immediately starts closing her dating apps, her video streaming services, the strawberry shortcake recipe she’d been staring at for weeks but never got around to baking. All the screens he’s seen her flicking through like they’re as insignificant yet entertaining as a celebrity’s posts on social media, she spreads those out on the table like a casino dealer who couldn’t quite believe the cards she’d just dealt.

‘I hate to break it to you, lover boy, but it looks like _Día de los Muertos_ came early this year.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sombra’s condensed, heavy summary of the charts and reports flying across her screens is interrupted by an incoming transmission from Overwatch. She grumbles, swearing colourfully at having been interrupted, but shoves him outside her (open) door and tells him to take the damn call.

So he does.

‘This is a secure data transmission,’ Athena’s voice chirps cheerfully. ‘Please ensure that you are in an area with excellent connection before taking—’

Angela’s more-harassed-than-usual face appears in his augmented vision. Who needs special glasses when you’ve got special eyeballs? ‘Genji! Report, please.’

There’s more activity in the background than usual, he notes. Operatives are actually _running_ from station to station, and the grey walls of HQ are glowing with the red of the alarms. He hasn’t seen a fuss like this since— Not even during the Volskaya incident, now that he thinks about it.

‘All is proceeding well,’ he lies. It’s a good thing the call from his end is audio-only. Otherwise he’d have to deal with some awkward questions about how and why he’s taking a call in plain sight of the enemy. ‘Everything still tallies with the last status report. I’ve updated Hanzo as per my last received instructions.’

Angela frowns. ‘According to your GPS information, you’re right outside the target’s door. Are you sure you are in a safe location for this call?’

Fuck. Goddamn shit fuck. ‘Yeah, target’s absorbed in a—’ Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Sombra pick up a blu-ray disc between two fingers and wave it in his direction. ‘She’s watching, uh, _Ocean’s Eleven_?’

‘Good,’ Angela notes, satisfied. ‘Her information must be lagging behind ours.’

Sombra snorts. He shoots her a death glare and gets a cheeky wink in reply.

Angela looks very apologetic when she says, ‘I’m very sorry, but we must put your current mission on hold for now. There’s been a serious breach in a maximum-level security cell, and we’re tracking the target’s whereabouts as best we can. Your new orders are to apprehend or execute the target. Preferably execute, though failing that, you may attempt to subdue the target and bring him in for deactivation.’

‘Deactivation?’ Genji plays dumb, and Sombra mouths a triumphant “I told you so”.

‘The target is an omnic who has been designated with the codename “Cultist”. He is extremely dangerous and must be destroyed immediately. We’re calling in all the agents we can, but, well— I know you like to work alone,’ she offers sympathetically, and Genji fights the urge to roll his eyes even though she can’t see his face, ‘so you’ll be filling the role of our dive team or emergency retrieval, whichever the Strike Commander decides he needs.’

‘Strike Commander? You mean Morrison is—’

‘Hush!’ Angela whispers hurriedly, though she’s not the one who’s (supposedly) at risk of being overheard. ‘Yes, he’s agreed to take up the role again. _That’s_ how dangerous our target is. Don’t underestimate him, Genji, please.’

Sombra is making large, frantic gestures that somehow perfectly communicate “We need to talk right now”.

Genji’s not sure when _Talon_ (of all things, really?) took priority over Overwatch, but he’s not gonna mess with the best informant he’s ever had the dubious pleasure of working with. ‘Understood, over.’

He terminates the transmission. When he enters Sombra’s room, he remembers to close the door behind him this time.

She doesn’t remark on it. ‘So, like I was saying before we got _rudely interrupted_ , our shipment’s on schedule, but our mark isn’t.’

Genji stares. ‘What?’

Sombra rolls her eyes. ‘Couldn’t they make you a better brain or something? Fine, simple English for the stupid Japanese: at the rate they’re going, the boat will definitely dock at two thirty-five AM, whimsical whaling stops included, but the omnic’s moving out way too early. Based on what my moles are saying, the omnic’s going, uhh— Shopping?’

‘What.’

‘He can’t find a repairman he likes. He’s kidnapped almost every mechanic in the city but he’s also releasing all of them— okay, maybe not all in one piece, but _mostly_ intact— and preliminary reports show that he’s looking for a new voice box? You know anything about this, Sparrow?’

Genji shakes his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Sombra leans back, sinking into her favourite rolling chair with a contented sigh. ‘Wow. You’re pretty useless.’

‘ _And you can suck my fucking di—_ ’ Genji holds up one hand to cut off both his own hiss and her inevitable snarky comeback. ‘Wait, I’ve got another transmission incoming. Unknown number? What is this, twenty-eighteen?’

_That_ gets her to sit up straight. Or, at least, just a little straighter. She stares at the information neatly organised on her holo-screen. Genji doesn’t want to know how she’s got a direct line into his head even without a physical cable tethering him to her servers. ‘I don’t recognise the signature. Got any secret admirers I should know about?’

‘No, shut up.’

Sombra rolls her eyes and complies.

When Genji accepts the call, the last thing he expects is to get thrown into a prehistoric chatroom.

_greetings_ , the message reads, like a text or an instant message from the remnants of the old world.

_yo_ , he replies cautiously.

_i do not have much time to explain_ , elaborates the unknown speaker unhelpfully. _but please do not engage the cultist today. do not find him. it is of paramount importance that you remain undetected._

_who are you?_

The unknown speaker hesitates, typing and erasing and typing and erasing.

_someone i hope you can trust_ , it finally sends. _run, genji, and don’t ever look back. overwatch will fall if he finds you. the world will fall if he finds you. you will fall if he finds you._

_how do you know my_ —

That’s all he formulates before he gets forcibly booted from the chatroom.

When his vision switches back to that of his current surroundings, he finds Sombra snapping her fingers in front of his face angrily. He blinks, shaking his head to clear the vertigo that comes with too-quick transitions, and tries to pay a small shred of attention to her sharp-precise rant.

‘—thing, I couldn’t hack into your transmission fast enough, and you look like a dead man walking and if you don’t actually want to _become_ a dead man that’s gonna stay between the both of us, and if you don’t want half an Uzi clip unloaded into the back of your head right now, you’re gonna tell me exactly what your new friend said.’

‘They told me to run,’ he says tiredly, leaning back and bumping his head against the wall. His eyelids fall shut.

He can hear Sombra starting to pace. Maybe it’s a stress thing. ‘They? Gender-neutral “they” or multiple people “they”?’

‘I don’t know!’ Genji snaps. ‘I’m not one of your moles, I don’t know what you want from me—’

Sombra grabs his jaw and forces him to look into her eyes. ‘From the moment you stepped in through that door the very first day Reyes sent you here, you became one of my moles. Your incompetence is compromising our mission— Ah, you understand those terms?’ The corner of her mouth tilts upward in a cold, cruel smile. ‘Then that’s how I’ll speak to you, _weapon_. Give me a status report and I’ll extract you if necessary.’

‘No need for extraction, operator,’ Genji says coldly, jerking his head backwards, out of her tight-clenched grip. ‘They put me in a virtual chatroom, said their piece, then kicked me out and left. Whoever they were, they didn’t want me going anywhere near the Cultist. I don’t know why, I don’t know who they were.’

Sombra sighs. ‘I don’t like having an unsolvable unknown in _my_ equations, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it. But you, now that I can. Come,’ she points at him, then at the cable in her hands, ‘sit. I need to run a full virus scan.’

‘I’m fine,’ he protests vehemently.

‘You can’t seriously think it’s for you?’ Sombra snorts, a little huff of mocking laughter. ‘It’s for _me_ , you idiot. I’m not maintaining a closed connection with you if there’s some weird gunk that’s been planted in your system.’

‘You’re doing _what_?’

She’s already plugging the cable into the back of his neck. He doesn’t fight it. ‘Clearly, I’ve got more data than Overwatch does. In real-time, too. You wanna stay alive? You disregard their orders and you listen to _me_.’

‘They’ll know something’s up—’

Sombra taps a circle on her screen and Genji _feels_ his system hibernating while her programs examine every single fragment of code backed up in his internal drives. He doesn’t fall over, thankfully— but he does lose all motor control in most regions of his body.

He stands before the unarmed hacker, completely defenceless, and can’t even frown when she pats his cheek indulgently.

‘Welcome to the life of a double agent, kid.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Genji leaves, Sombra gets up from her chair and stretches. It’s been a long day— longer than usual, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately, her work’s not quite done.

The entirety of her surveillance room is covered by holo-screens displaying all sorts of mission-relevant information. Everything from news, to tweets, to research articles and standard normals; everything there is to know is within arm’s reach.

She opens up one more screen and makes a triply-encrypted call.

It connects after a minute or so.

‘WHAT,’ is the grumpy greeting she gets.

‘Aw, don’t you miss me?’ She keeps an eye on her newest mole’s GPS signal. He’s headed away from the wharfs— probably going to harass his brother again. She chuckles. _Siblings_. Always so fun to rile up.

A loud gunshot breaks the silence from Reaper’s comm.

‘You alright, boss?’

‘I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU UNTIL YOU CUT THE CRAP AND TELL ME WHY YOU EVEN CALLED.’

There’s a scream.

‘Temper, temper.’

‘I’LL KILL YOU MYSELF. DOOR. AND START TALKING, I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY.’

‘I’ve seen your schedule,’ Sombra lies smoothly, ‘you’re free til six, and it’s only, what— seven in the morning?’

‘DOOR.’

‘Ask nicely,’ she singsongs. ‘I could make you wait an hour and it wouldn’t compromise the mission.’

‘FUCK YOU.’

She overrides the control panel for whatever godforsaken part of the world Reaper’s gone to this time (China? Really?) and opens the door. Fully. Without slamming it shut in his face again.

‘THANKS.’

‘Oh, almost forgot!’ Sombra reaches for a nail file and starts sanding down the tiniest imperfection on her otherwise perfectly-manicured nail. ‘Your old friend, Jack Morrison? He’s leading a strike team against the Cultist. Heard he’s wearing his big boy pants again. _Strike Commander_. Why didn’t we ever call you Strike Commander—’

Reaper hangs up on her. She laughs and tosses the nail file back into the correct drawer. It lands with a thunk, masking the almost-imperceptible _ding_ of a status update message among the neat chaos of all her other screens that declares all of operative Reaper’s appointments cleared for the foreseeable future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hanzo thinks most of his department is useless. This is common knowledge, and rarely disputed, which means that over time people have learned to take it as true fact. What most people don’t know is that he would, in fact, begrudgingly put his life into the hands of exactly one person in the entirety of the force.

That person (affectionately referred to as Hanzo’s “work husband” by the rest of the department when they think they’re safely out of earshot) strolls into his office with a sheaf of papers in hand and a deeply troubled frown marring his usually-carefree face.

‘Pardner? Seems like we’ve run into a bit of a tight spot.’

Hanzo waves him off, already organising the reports trickling in to fill the triple monitor holo-screens he’d set up at his desk, and replies with a curt, ‘I am well aware.’

Jesse’s brows furrow even more. Hanzo wasn’t aware that he possessed a facial expression other than “shitfaced grin.” He vaguely registers that he should probably be a little more concerned, but right now he’s got _much_ bigger fish to fry.

‘No— Well— I mean— Tight, you know? Real tight. Tighter than my—’

Hanzo takes a moment to mentally defenestrate his wayward subordinate. It’s more satisfying than he cares to admit. ‘Do not finish that sentence,’ he threatens, ‘or I will put you on traffic duty for the next two weeks.’

‘No, listen,’ Jesse tries again, a little too desperately for comfort, and Hanzo finally drags his gaze over to the farce of a cowboy standing before him, and _finally_ realises that Jesse looks thoroughly confused. Here’s the thing: Jesse never looks confused. Aloof, bored, lazy— all unfortunate expressions that Hanzo has had to learn to ignore for the sake of his sanity, but _confused_ has never once been something he’s had to deal with in the one year he’s had the dubious pleasure of working with him.

So he leans back in his very comfortable chair and drums his fingers on the armrest impatiently. ‘Very well.’

‘Okay, so don’t ask how I got this intel—'

Meaning: he’s tapped into his shady underground contacts which Hanzo turns a blind eye to the same way he ignores Genji’s poor life choices. (Thinly. With his contempt veiled so transparently he might as well be sipping a cup of tea while he judges them.)

‘—but mechanics are goin’ missing, all over the city. Seems like he’s targeting specialists in omnic modifications—’

Hanzo flicks a glance over at the screen on his left. Sure enough, Jesse’s report lines up perfectly with the incoming news transmission.

‘—but, uh, you might wanna sit down for this.’

‘I am sitting down,’ he points out slowly, watching Jesse’s fidgeting with no small amount of interest. The tapping of his nails against the armrest has long slowed to a contemplative beat.

Jesse opens his mouth. Then he closes it. Then he opens it again, and this time there’s a kind of resolve that’s injected itself straight into his spine so that he’s unfairly calm when he says:

‘The escaped convict mentioned Genji by name.’

Hanzo’s not sure when he’d vaulted across the table, but suddenly Jesse’s collar is a bundle of cloth in his white-knuckled fist and the safety’s been flicked off the pistol which usually sits in a holster by Hanzo’s hip. Aforementioned weapon is also now pressed under Jesse’s jaw harshly enough to leave a mark.

Jesse doesn’t even flinch.

‘How do you know my brother?’ Hanzo demands.

There’s resignation in his eyes when Jesse produces a familiar patch from his pocket. But he is gentle-and-kind when he pries the weapon from Hanzo’s iron grip, only to press the bloodied Blackwatch insignia into his suddenly-sweaty hands, a cruel reminder of the past that just won’t let go.

‘Never got a proper chance to tell you.’ Jesse is an open book while he calmly searches Hanzo’s face for some indicator of how badly he’s fucked up. And that’s just the thing Hanzo hates about the stupid cowboy— he’s open and transparent even while he keeps his secrets locked tight away, but it’s precisely those secrets that have made it so easy for the two of them to get along. They’re birds of the same broken feather, and Hanzo’s mistake was never realising that they’d both gotten fucked over by the exact same shitstorm.

Which makes it so very easy for him to accuse, ‘You knew all along.’

‘I did,’ Jesse agrees. ‘So are we just gonna sit here and yell at each other, make the same mistakes all over again?’

Hanzo growls and _oh_ , it’s so satisfying to finally twist the knife of guilt into someone-other-than-himself and he can’t help the triumph-and-mocking arrogance that twists the corner of his lip when he hisses, ‘I will not lose my brother to _someone else_ ’s incompetence again—’

And _finally_ Jesse shoves back, slamming Hanzo against his own desk and keeping him pinned with one strong arm across his chest while the other rests the cold metal of Hanzo’s gun against his temple. Even though the tables are turning against him, the operative buried deep within Hanzo’s repressed memories can’t help but admire the lethal-efficient motions that seem to be a constant among all the Blackwatch agents.

Jesse McCree is picture-perfect fury-and-loss and Hanzo can’t bring himself to look away. ‘I lost my best friend,’ Jesse shouts the accusation right into his face, loud and clear, ‘and where were you? Where were you, huh, _anija_?’

Hanzo hasn’t heard that word in over a year, and it stings worse than any of the disgusting infected open-flesh wounds he’s endured during his time in Overwatch. But he grits his teeth and meets Jesse’s accusation head-on with all the grace-and-steel that he’s had to pump into his body just so he can continue walking with his head held high. ‘Don’t you dare call me that.’

Jesse closes his eyes, and with a pang Hanzo recognises the inward focus which means that he’s counting his breaths. It’s a familiar sight. Genji used to do the exact same thing.

‘Okay,’ Jesse exhales. ‘Fine. But we need to get to those docks before the convict does. They’ll need all the cover fire they can—’

_That_ gets Hanzo’s attention. Then an oddly familiar purple skull symbol catches his eye. He hadn’t noticed earlier, but the papers that had been in Jesse’s hands are now scattered all over the floor, and the symbol is stamped large on every single page like a giant obnoxious watermark.

He looks back at Jesse, who’s wearing a spectacular _oh shit_ expression. ‘How many more secrets are you hiding?’ Hanzo demands.

Jesse flinches.

‘How many?’

‘We’ll talk later.’

‘How. Many.’

‘Later—’

‘Jesse. Please.’

Silence. And then—

‘Not now.’

There’s a pause punctuated only by heavy breathing, like they’d just fought a gladiator match with their fists instead of their words.

‘Fine. But you will tell me everything after this is over.’

‘Yeah,’ Jesse agrees, offering him an olive branch in the form of a helping hand. ‘I will, I swear, just— Promise you’ll watch my back, alright, partner?’

(Later, when Hanzo draws his bow and takes aim at the thing that might have once been his brother, he will wonder if this was the point where everything went wrong.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

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